On the campaign trail, Governor Romney has latched on to the
Obama administration’s defense budget as indicating a weakening
of America’s military strength, although Saturday marked an
interesting addition to his campaign’s talking points: the F-22
Raptor.

The aircraft was included in Romney’s televised remarks in
Virginia, along with repeated calls to bolster defense spending
elsewhere. Via
DoD Buzz:

“Rather than completing nine ships per year, I’d move that up to
15. I’d also add F-22s to our Air Force fleet. And I’d add about
100,000 active duty personnel to our military team."

The fifth generation fighter’s production ended in 2011 under
Defense Secretary Robert Gate’s efforts to streamline big budget
items, which led the U.S. Senate to vote 58-40 to end the program
(under veto threat of President Obama) at just 187 of the
original 750 units.

At the time, some notable Republicans supported the move,
including Senator
John McCain, who remarked on the Senate floor:

We're not saying the F-22 isn't a good airplane—We're saying it
is time to end the production of the F-22.

Since its hotly debated demise, the aircraft has made more
headlines for its troubled oxygen supply system and dubious
dogfighting performance than anything else.

So, why then bring up the F-22 as an element of
Romney’s prospective defense strategy at all? It’s a
potentially problematic move, as at least one current estimate to
re-start the aircraft’s assembly line hovers at $900 million and
could take two years, and that seems to be an optimistic
assessment.

While it might be politically expedient to tout assembling more
of the highly sophisticated aircraft as a means of bolstering
U.S. military projection, it seems to underplay the effort that
defense contractors (Lockheed, in this case) go through to secure
supply networks, and could very well undercut efforts to secure
international orders of Lockheed’s other fifth-generation
aircraft, the single-engined F-35 Lightning II.

With delays and cost-overruns for the albeit more straightforward
F-35, the Pentagon has nonetheless faced struggles in securing
international orders for the aircraft, at times having to
re-assure even its closest European and Japanese defense allies
to procure them.

That is not to say that the
F-22 is not a desirable international export—in fact, Japan
wanted the aircraft enthusiastically, in particular for its twin
engined design, and opted for the F-35 as its reluctant second
choice to replace the country’s aging F-4 “Kai” Phantoms.

Still, considering the re-activation fee for the Raptor program,
Governor Romney’s defense platform would ring fairly hollow if it
did not address just how many of the aircraft his administration
would build, and justifying their expense when arguments failed
to convince the Senate and members of his own party of their
utility in 2011.

Looming defense cuts via sequestration, which would be enacted in
next year’s defense spending to the tune of $500 billion unless
both the administration and Congress reach a deficit reduction
plan, has given Governor Romney maneuvering room on
national defense.

Romney’s
own plan calls for a return “to the budget baseline
established by Secretary Robert Gates in 2010,” prior to efforts
by
Gates himself to reign in costs via strategic cuts and troop
reductions.